Violence has become an object of consumption in our culture. We pay money at the box office to see people gunned down and airplanes explode, but when we encounter violence in the Jewish and Christian scriptures, we recoil. In the past, readers tended to rationalize this violence as necessary to God's purpose or as just deserts. The people living in the land of Canaan prior to the conquest led by Joshua had to die in order for God's promise to Abraham to be fulfilled, and surely, every man, woman and child must have been very wicked. Such readings tend to produce a theology with which many contemporary readers are not comfortable. Some naïve Christian readers return to a second century heresy promoted by a fellow named Marcion. He argued that the God of the Hebrew Scriptures had nothing to do with the God of Christian Scriptures. The God of the Law was fickle capricious, ignorant, despotic and cruel, he was the God of wrath, whereas the God of the NT was the God of Love. These readers seem not to recognize the violence in texts about end times found in the NT. Many contemporary readers seem to deal with disturbing texts by closing the book. What you do not read cannot hurt you.
From time to time, I am charged with undermining a student's faith simply by requiring that they read the Bible. When they ask me why the violence is there if God desires love peace and justice, I tell them that I think that the Bible is an honest book. As a woman, I am constantly vigilant lest my body be the site of violence. Should it come as any wonder that women are raped and murdered in the Bible when they are raped and murdered in life? Should it be any surprise that innocent people die in order that another people's hegemony of a territory might be established? If the righteous suffer in this world, is it any wonder that Jonathan or Jeremiah or Jesus suffer in the Bible.
I propose that we continue reading with this cognitive dissonance buzzing through our brains. What is it about the way that we consume violence for entertainment that makes violence in the Bible distasteful? Perhaps the Bible resists the patterns of representing violence that make it attractive. By attending to patterns both in the Bible and in our own construction of meaning perhaps we can recognize the irrationality of violence that the Bible uncovers.
The first strategy which I encourage you to adopt is to deromanticize violence and power. Our culture perpetuates an ancient tendency to romanticize violence. The young men who donned long black duster coats to go into Columbine high school were simply imitating the appearance of the romantic hero from various movies they had seen. In last summer's blockbuster release Gladiator, we witnessed Russell Crow battling all the champions of the coliseum while tigers leaped out at him from a pit. At the end of the contest, he stands unharmed by the attack and emotionally untouched by the violence.
When the Bible casts God into the role of the warrior, we find a very different picture painted with words. I invite you to participate in the visualization of a passage in Isaiah 63 in which God returns from a battle waged against Israel's enemies, a battle that God is forced to fight, not because Israel is a damsel in distress, but because Israel's lack of fidelity to God has landed her in bondage. She has consorted with the powerful military might of her time, Babylon, despite Isaiah's warnings that she has made a covenant with death (28:15), and Babylon has enslaved her people to its will, carting them into exile.
In Isaiah 62: 11 we are encouraged to focalize the image of God. God tells the prophet to say to daughter Zion, "see, your salvation comes; his reward is with him, and his recompense before him." The notes at the bottom of my Bible describe what follows as the triumphant return of the divine warrior, but look at what the prophet tells us we see.
Chapter 63 presents the voice of Israel in this metaphoric drama. We stand waiting and watching for God's return as the passive beneficiaries of God's heroic deeds.
Our eyes are turned to the South and from over the horizon a figure comes into view, "Who is this that comes from Edom, from Bozrah in garments stained crimson?"
Our first view of the returning divine warrior is of an unrecognizable, solitary figure in a blood stained robe.
The translators of this passage seem to resist seeing the figure presented by the Hebrew. In the second line, that typically parallels the first, they write, "Who is this so splendidly robed, marching in his great might?"
The Hebrew describes a figure of great strength trudging along, bent over, with verbs used to describe the way a person in chains cowers. The splendor is imposed upon the text by the translators.
Yet in spite of their attempt to overlook the failure of the speaker to recognize the figure and to romanticize his return, they cannot obscure the fact that he comes on foot.
When King Ninurta, a Babylonian warrior god, returns to Nippur victorious from battle, he comes in full regalia, driving a chariot and bearing the trophies of his victory.
He is greeted: "My sovereign, perfect warrior, heed yourself.
Ninurta, perfect warrior, heed
yourself. Your radiance has covered Enlil's temple like a cloak.
When you step into your chariot, whose creaking is a pleasant
sound, heaven and earth tremble. " The text goes on to describe
his booty: "directed his captive wild bulls into the temple.
He directed his captive cows, like the wild bulls, into the temple.
He laid out the booty of his plundered cities. The Anuna were
amazed....... Enlil the Great Mountain made obeisance to him,
and Acimbabbar prayed to him."
THE
RETURN OF NINURTA TO NIPPUR Source: Black, J.A., Cunningham,
G., Robson, E., and Zólyomi, G., The Electronic Text Corpus
of Sumerian Literature, Oxford 1998-.
The God of Israel has to announce himself: "It is I, announcing vindication, might to save."
Israel is incredulous, "Why are your robes red, and your garments like those who tread the wine press?
God responds with a horrifying account of what he has had to do:
I have trodden the winepress alone,
And from the peoples not one was with me;
I trod them in my anger and trampled them in my wrath;
Their juice spattered on my garments and stained all my robes.I looked, but there was no helper
I stared, but there was no one to sustain me;
So my own arm brought me victory, and my wrath sustained me.
I trampled down peoples in my anger,
I crushed them in my wrath,
And I poured out their lifeblood on the earth.
This depiction of the heroic feats of the victor stands in sharp contrast with the sorts of battle hymns sung by the Egyptians. In the Victory Hymn of Rameses II over the Hittites, Rameses, depicted as the son of the God Ammon, stands upon his chariot and takes pleasure in the killing.
The Hymn narrates a similar circumstance. Ramses, in the midst of battle, states:
Here I stand,
All alone;
There is no one at my side,
My warriors and chariots afeared,
Have deserted me,
none heard My voice,
when to the cravens I, their king, for succor, cried.
But I find that Ammon's grace
Is better far to me
Than a million fighting men and ten thousand chariots be.
Rather horror, Rameses describes the joy of the battle:
At my pleasure I made slaughter,
So that none
E'er had time to look behind, or backward fled;
Where he fell, did each one lay
On that day,
From the dust none ever lifted up his head.
From the Internet Ancient History Source Book .
Israel is not allowed to ignore the price that their God pays for their redemption. His reward is not a splendid victory and the trophies of conquest.
The second strategy like the first entails stopping ourselves as readers from perpetuating a habit. We tend to privilege violence that leads to the creation of the status quo in which we live. Thomas Jefferson wrote, "The tree of liberty must be periodically watered with the blood of patriots and tyrants." Vladimir Lenin put it less eloquently; "You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs."
Much of the violence in the Jewish and Christian scriptures happens as a prelude to the enthronement of the king. We have a tendency to read this as necessary violence.
But the text itself provides us with the basis for a critique.
Deut 17:14-20 describes the sort of king that Israel may have. He cannot be a foreign power. He cannot acquire many horses or wives or silver and gold. He shall have a copy of the law written for him which he will keep in his presence, and he will diligently observe the words of the law and the statues, neither exalting himself above other members of the community nor turning aside from the commandments." Deuteronomy presents us with a very modern view of a constitutionally limited monarchy. When The Israelites finally ask for a king, Samuel who is judge over Israel presents them with a warning. A king will create a large standing army and in order to support it he will take their sons to run before his cavalry, their harvest to fee the army and to pay for weapons, and their daughters to serve the soldiers. He will demand a tithe equal to what one gives God. (1 Sam 8). These texts prepare the reader to read with suspicion; we are to be suspicious of the accumulation of the trappings of power that sets the king up as a rival to God.
When reading the David narrative, we tend to forget that the anointing of David precedes any mighty acts of valor. In a comic scene in which Samuel attempts to anoint David's brothers beginning with the one who is in appearance the greatest warrior, God tells Samuel, "Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature. .. for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart."
In the long narrative that recounts David's ascent to and maintenance of his throne, David succumbs to the demands of appearance. One by one he acquires the hallows of a king, the visible symbols of royal authority. He obtains a princess bride by cutting off the foreskins of a thousand Philistines; he claims his sanctified sword through a deception. Claiming to be in Saul's service, he asks for a sword from the priests at Nod who have no other than Goliath's sword that lies behind the ephod, that is among the items dedicated to God and ,therefore, not to be appropriated for human use. As a consequence of this deception, Saul puts eighty-five priests and their entire households to death.
David then gathers an army around him of discontents and debtors. He begins to accumulate wealth by demanding that landowners pay for protection. When he defeats his rivals, he takes their women to be his wives, first Abigail whom the narrator never fails to remind us is the widow of Nabal of Carmel, then Ahinoam of Jezreel, who seems have been one of Saul's wives. And eventually, Bathsheba the wife of a man whose murder David arranges.
In an episode seldom recounted, he enters the service of the Philistine King as a mercenary and calls him Lord.
When Saul dies, the people anoint David king at Hebron in response to his military demonstration of power, where upon Joab enters the narrative. Joab is David's general. Whenever it becomes necessary for someone to be murdered to secure David's safety, be it the general Abner or the husband of the woman with whom David commits adultery or the son who attempts to usurp the throne, it is Joab who commits the deed, whereupon David makes a public show of mourning.
When Joab defeats the Ammonites at Rabbah, he takes the crown of the god Milcom from the head of the cult statue, a crown weighing 75 pounds with a precious jewel inset, and has it placed upon David's head. David is crowned by the hand of a character whom the narrator repeatedly depicts as an assassin.
In stark contrast to this king who gathers the visible symbols of earthly power, stands a god who remains content to dwell in a tent. Reality and appearance are two different things. Violence tends to belong to the appearance of power.
The next strategy which I would have you adopt requires to attention to the absurdity of violence. Much of the violence in this world and in the world of the text is the result of competition. To the victor go the spoils. Part of the abiding mythos of our culture is that if you are in the right you will prevail in battle. In our movies, the hero always outguns or outfights the villain. If he dies, it is never before he accomplished the deed of dealing death to his opponent. In Gladiator, Russell Crow kills the wicked Emperor Commodus before he succumbs to a lethal blow inflicted at a point when he could not defend himself. The filmmakers presuppose that their audience is ignorant of the fact that Commodus, in fact, reigns for 21 years longer than the movie would have it. The plot against him upon which the movie is based is motivated by the desire of the emperor's sister to put her husband on the throne. It ends with the emperor secure and his sister and her husband dead.
One story in the David narrative (2 Samuel 2:12-17) underscores the absurdity of the ideas that might makes right and that virtue prevails in armed conflict and affirms the idea that those who live by the sword die by the sword.
The scene is set immediately after the death of Saul and Jonathan
when the people anoint David king. Saul has a son Ishbaal who
is prepared to lay claim to the throne and who is supported by
Saul's general Abner. The two armies led by Abner and Joab meet
at Gibeon "One group sat on one side of the pool, while the
other sat on the other side of the pool." and propose a contest
"Abner said to Joab, 'Let the young men come forward and
have a context before us." Joab said, "let them come
forward." It is not clear what the purpose of this contest
will serve. Will the losers concede the throne to the winners?
The valor of battle is reduced to sort of chess match. The soldiers
"came forward are were counted as they passed by, twelve
for Benjamin and Ishbaal son of Saul, and twelve of the servants
of David." The number twelve is surely significant. The twelve
that prevail will be Israel. "Each grasps his opponent by
the head, and thrust his sword in his opponent's side, so they
fell down together." Stalemate. All things being equal, all
die. Nothing is proven and an all out battle ensues. Rather than
setting things to right, violence leads to more violence.
Here then is another pattern that biblical narratives resist. The violence of film so often ends with the illusion of peace; whereas violence in the Bible leads more often than not to the escalation of violence.
Christians have a bad habit of using violent stories in the Hebrew Bible to justify Christian triumphalism. Where the Israelite people fail, the Christians prevail. This attitude has sanctioned untold violence by Christians against Jews. This observation leads me to my last offering of the evening.
The violence in the New Testament of the Christian scriptures tends to be concentrated in texts about ends times. Because God's judgment is part of end time expectations, readers tend to make several assumptions. One that the victims of the violence are those who are condemned by God. Two that God needs violence to establish his reign. And three, that God is the agent of the violence.
The questions that I encourage you to ask when reading descriptions of eschatological violence are the following. Who is doing violence and against whom is the violence directed?
If one examines the New Testament accounts of the violence that precedes the end times, we find it occurs in the wars of nations. It is symptomatic of the order that God seeks to abolish. Violence done in the name of God is wrought by those who lead people astray (Mark 13: 3-6) . Those who endure and receive salvation are those who suffer the consequences of this violence, not the perpetrators of it.
Let us turn our attention to the Book of Revelation chapter
6, easily the most violence-ridden text in the canon. We have
a tendency to read this book as though it were all caste in the
future. These are the events that God unleashes in order to defeat
evil and to enthrone the lamb.
Why do we assume that what the scroll contains is a prediction
of what is to come. Here I return to what was a traditional reading
of the text until the pre-reformation apocalyptic movements. The
first rider represents the edenic condition in which humanity
is given dominion over creation. The second seal represents the
arrival of murder. The third famine and dearth, and the fourth
sickness and death. These are the consequences of the fall. These
are the conditions that already beset humanity. The fifth seal
describes the souls under the altar who have died for the word
of the Lord. At the time that this is written, that altar must
signify the altar of the temple. These are people who have died
under its economy, in the context of the Mosaic covenant. The
sixth seal describes events that are also described in Matthew
at the crucifixion of Jesus.
In chapter thirteen, John describes the beast of the sea, a creature of human political authority, and the beast of the earth, a creature of religious authority that encourages people, whose names to worship the beast of the sea. From the foundation of the earth, the names of those who do not bow to this authority, its victims are written in the book of life. The text proclaims "Let anyone who has an ear listen: If you are to be taken captive, into captivity you go; if you kill with the sword, with the sword you must be killed. Here is a call for the endurance and faith of the saints.
The sort of warfare depicted in the apocalyptic literature does not deny violence, but it characterizes the actions of those who battle for righteousness or for God as decidedly nonviolent.
I do not doubt that there are texts of violence in Scripture to which my strategies do not apply and which will continue to disturb our contemporary readers. Regarding this text and to those readers, I can respond only by saying that ignoring that violence is no solution to our problem. We must persist in wrestling with these texts if we are to over come the legacy of violence with which our past and our culture leave us.
I will end with one final text that offers a vision of peace rather than violence. The vision of peace offered by the prophet Zechariah is not political or military defeat of one's enemies and the establishment of Israelite domination.
"Thus says the Lord of hosts: Old men and old women shall again sit in the streets of Jerusalem, each with staff in hand because of their great age. And the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing in its streets.(Zech 8:4-5).